He set off very early next morning, for he would have to go down to the bank and make arrangements for his absence. He had hoped that Roland would have written to them, but the post brought only a circular from a turf accountant.
“Have you decided what you are going to say to him?” his wife asked.
“Not yet. I shall think it out in the train. I shall be able to say the right thing when the time comes.”
“You won’t be hard to him. I expect he’s very miserable.”
It was a bad day for Mr. Whately. During the long train journey through fields and villages, vivid in the bright June sunlight, he wondered in what spirit he should receive his son. Roland would be no doubt waiting for him at the station. What would they say to each other? How would they begin? He would have lunch, of course, at the Eversham Hotel, and then, he supposed, he would have to see the headmaster. That would be very difficult. He always felt shy in the headmaster’s presence. The headmaster was such an aristocrat; he was stamped with the hallmark of Eton and Balliol, while he himself was the manager of a bank in London. He was always aware of his social inferiority in that book-lined study, with the five austere reproductions of Greek sculpture. The interview would be very difficult. But the headmaster would at least do most of the talking; whereas with Roland.... Mr. Whately shifted uneasily in his corner seat. What on earth was he going to say? Something, surely, about the moral significance of the act. Roland must realize that he was guilty of really immoral conduct, and yet how was he to be made to realize it? What arguments must be produced? Wherein lay the harm of calf love? And looking back over his own life Mr. Whately could not see that there was any particular vice attached to it. It was absurd and preposterous, but it was very pleasant. He remembered how he had once fancied himself in love with his grandmother’s housemaid. He used to get up early in the morning so that he could sit with her while she laid the grate, and he had knelt down beside her and joined his breath with hers in a fierce attempt to kindle the timid flame. He had never kissed her, but she had let him hold her hand, and the summer holidays had passed in delicious reveries. He remembered also how, a little later, he had fallen desperately in love with the girl at the tobacconist’s, and he could still recall the breathless excitement of that morning when he had come into the shop and found it empty. For a second she had listened at the door leading to the private part of the house and had then leaned forward over the counter: “Quick,” she had whispered.